


fiat lux

by Kirta



Category: The Traitor Son Cycle - Miles Cameron
Genre: F/M, Gen, but background to everyone yelling at gabriel, but there's a bunch of others hanging around bc it's a wedding!, except instead of a funeral he crashes his friend's wedding, gabriel/blanche and tom/sukey, hmm no one else really has more than a line or two, so you know how gabriel would Absolutely be that asshole and show up at his own funeral?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 11:02:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21337189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirta/pseuds/Kirta
Summary: Two months after Ash's defeat, Tom and Sukey are getting married in Liviapolis, Sauce won't give Tom a break, and to top it all off, they have an unexpected visitor.
Relationships: Alison Audley | Sauce & Thomas Lachlan | Bad Tom, Gabriel Muriens | The Red Knight & The Company (The Traitor Son Cycle)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	fiat lux

**Author's Note:**

> i was rereading the end of the fall of dragons and decided gabriel would definitely be the guy to show up at his own funeral and hand-waved some magic bullshit so he could show up here and had fun with it

His eyes opened. That one fact was more shocking than anything he had learned in the past year of the deep truths of the world. Worlds. He had died. More than that, the golden light had finally overtaken him in the same moment that Ash’s breath of utter destruction undid him and Ariosto. He blinked, and his eyes still opened. He took a breath, and another, and he could feel his body. He was there. By some miracle or the grace of God, he was alive.

“_You could stand to spare the rest of us some of the credit,_” a voice said in his head. He retreated _to his palace on reflex, and there, by Prudentia’s pedestal- empty now- stood Amicia. She smiled at him, and she was made of golden light. “I’m glad it worked.”_

_His eyes were stuck on Amicia. She was standing here, in his palace. But she had ascended months ago. How was she here?_

_A spike of_ aethereal _pain drove him to his knees. He could hear Amicia calling his name as memories flashed in the floor tiles of his sanctum. Amicia was at his side and when he blinked and the images faded he smiled back at her._

_“We did it. Quite honestly, I was not at all sure it would work,” he admitted. Amicia laughed._

_“I’ve missed quite a lot if you’re admitting uncertainty at all, even after the fact.”_

_Gabriel looked down. A golden tether wound around his ankle and extended to Amicia’s. “I’ll tell you all about it some day.”_

_Amicia’s smile was serene as she pulled him to his feet. “I look forward to it- many years from now.”_

_Gabriel reached out and took her hands, bright and shining against his own. “I will do my best to stay here.” He hesitated, just for a heartbeat. “Thank you, Amicia. And when you return, please thank the others for me as well.” She nodded. He took a deep breath. “I should get going, then.”_

_Amicia leaned forward and kissed his cheek, gentle and warm. “Tell them I say hello,” she said. “And don’t forget.” She stepped back and vanished from his palace. He sighed and returned_ to the real.

He was alone, and the sky above him was winter-grey. There were rocks digging into his bare back and the air was even colder than the ground. He exhaled, and a white cloud drifted upwards.

“Hey! Mister! Are you alright?” There were light, hurried footsteps and a child’s voice at his ear. A young girl’s face appeared above him. She frowned down at him. “What are you doing down there?”

“Sarah! Get back here!” an older woman’s voice called.

“But mom-”

“Now.”

The girl groaned and left his field of vision. Gabriel cajoled his body into moving and slowly sat upright. Footsteps approached him again, heavier.

“Sir, may I ask what exactly you’re doing here?” This woman was very visibly the girl’s mother, with the same hair and the same nose and the same grey eyes.

“I was… resting,” Gabriel said. The woman’s eyes narrowed and flicked down. Gabriel realized then that he was quite naked, and that the world around him was quite snow-covered. He barely felt the cold.

“An interesting choice of resting places, then,” the woman said. She pursed her lips and called back to her daughter. “Sarah, bring me one of the old blankets.” She stood straight and offered a hand to Gabriel. He reached for it with his left arm, and realized it ended in a stump halfway to the elbow. _Right._ He raised his other arm. Sarah appeared with an old, patched blanket and presented it to him.

“My name is Leanne, and you’ve already met my daughter Sarah. Who are you?”

He wrapped the blanket around himself, mildly surprised it managed to cover most of him. “Gabriel. Thank you, madame. Would you be so kind as to tell me where exactly I’ve ended up?” She sounded like an Alban native. The Brogat, perhaps?

Leanne eyed him. “What do you intend to do with the information?”

Gabriel shrugged. “That depends entirely on what the answer is.”

“Hmm. You’re not three miles from Albinkirk and the monastery at Lissen Carak.”

Gabriel nodded. “And the date?”

“It’s nearly Christmas.”

Gabriel’s breath caught. “Is it- when was the dragon fought? How long has it been?”

“Barely a month,” Leanne said. She gestured around them. “Everything is still scarred from the battle. Who exactly are you, Gabriel?”

He hesitated. “I was part of the battle. I… don’t remember much between now and then.” And it wasn’t even a lie. Amicia would be proud.

Leanne sighed. She climbed onto the driver’s bench of a sturdy cart on a rutted road. Sarah clambered up behind her. “You’re not the first one of your type.” She waved to the bed of the cart, loaded with barrels and burlap sacks. “We’re headed to Albinkirk anyway- you’ll be able to find better help there. Climb in.”

Lacking any real alternatives, and not overly eager to walk to Albinkirk without any shoes, he did as he was told. The cart rolled away from the snowy field he had awoken in. Gabriel spent the rest of the day answering Sarah’s enthusiastic questions and pondering his new situation. His possessions at the moment totaled only a borrowed blanket. Anyone who knew him believed him dead, and rightfully so. There was nothing stopping him from just walking away. Amicia and the other ascended, the whole host of those who had achieved apotheosis, had sent him back against some future need, something even they couldn’t fully understand. All they knew was that it would come, in time. “In time” could mean anything from a decade to another ten millenia, of course, in the strange ways the _aethereal_ dealt with time. It was possible, even likely, that he would die of natural causes again long before he was needed, but he could still prepare the world for the future.

He had wanted to come back, but he was done with saving the world. He was tired. He wanted to see his friends. He wanted to hold Blanche again. He would leave what help he could, because he had promised Amicia he would, and because he never could leave well enough alone even when he tried, but he intended to spend most of this second life with Blanche and their child.

Leanne’s cart rolled on towards Albinkirk.

\---

Alison stood beside Tom and tried very, very hard not to laugh at him. She had seen the man face down dragons and Odine and all manner of creatures of the Wild, and never once had she seen him this nervous.

“Tom, you’ve been sleeping with her for four years. You’re practically married already.” He glared at her and she couldn’t hold back the laughter. “Really, can this honestly be worse than Ash?”

“Yes,” he snapped. She let her laughter die.

“Tom, I swear, it won’t be that bad. You only have three lines and one of them is two words long, and Sukey will forgive you if you mess it up.” And because she really couldn’t help needling her best friend, she added: “Eventually.” She ducked his angry swipe with a laugh and twirled away. She eyed the room around them. It was spacious, and intended for a far larger wedding party than just the two of them. “Lookin’ for a fight, are ya?” That, at last, brought a grin to Bad Tom’s face. Sauce grinned in answer and sent a squire running for their swords.

Alison’s Firensi longsword had nothing on Tom’s dragon-blade- it was nearly two feet longer than hers, but a large part of what Alison knew about fighting men larger than her she had learned from Tom. Their swords rang against each other, loud and echoing in the empty room. Alison threw all her strength into the fight, and she knew Tom did, too, though they were both scrupulously careful not to mar their wedding finery. She lost, in the end, but today she didn’t really mind.

“Better?” she asked between breaths, leaning against a pillar. Tom’s grin was just this side of feral.

There was a knock at the door. It was time. Half the tension Tom had managed to work out in their fight sprung back into his shoulders. Alison made a face and nudged him forward. He paused at the door into the cathedral proper. “Thanks for standin’ with me today, Sauce,” he said quietly. Or at least, as quietly as he ever said anything. Alison grinned and pushed him through the door.

“What, you thought I’d let someone else do it?”

The ceremony went off without a hitch, and Sauce cheered with the rest of them. Blanche led them to the courtyard for eating and dancing and drinking, and laughter filled the night. Alison missed Zac. She danced with anyone who asked her and a few who didn’t, Gabriel’s brother among them. Their dance was one of the slower ones, and she could see the distance in Gavin’s eyes that she had felt in her own more than once that night. She had heard that his Lady Mary had been killed in Harndon while playing body-double for the queen. It would take a long time before the world recovered from this war.

She danced with Tom, and then the Duchess Giselle, and then with Michael, and when Kaitlin handed their daughter to Michael Alison danced with her, too. She was taking a breather and several drinks when Sukey appeared with a man who was definitely not Tom on her arm. She gave the man a look Alison couldn't decipher, turned on her heel, and left.

The man held his hand out to Alison with courtly grace. "Would the Marquesa of Albin honor me with a dance this fine frigid evening?" There was a teasing note in the man's voice that felt familiar. Alison looked more closely at his face, shrouded in shadows that haunted the courtyard like so many ghosts. He pulled back. Alison followed him. Her hand closed on his with all the strength of a woman ten years a soldier and four years a knight but despite his high-born manners he didn't so much as twitch at her grip. Alison's eyes narrowed as the man drew her into the middle of the dancers. The man spun her with one hand, the other hidden by the sweep of his cloak as they turned. _Assassin,_ was her first thought. _I know you,_ was the next. Her hand twitched towards her dagger, sheathed on her knight's belt just as they turned again and torchlight fell full across the stranger's face and Alison's heart stopped.

"You-"

He pulled her in with a grapplers’ move and kissed her. The kiss was strange for any number of reasons, not least of which being that kisses were usually her idea. Just behind that was the fact that he had been dead for the last two months, and that his very pregnant wife was sitting not twenty feet away watching the dancing couples morosely.

"Sauce, I have spent the last two weeks walking from Albinkirk to Liviapolis, and by God I am going to dance if I want to," the Captain said, with perhaps the smuggest grin she had ever seen on his face. 

"But- you-" she spluttered as he spun her again. "Where the _fuck_ have you been?"

"Would you believe me if I said heaven?"

"It would certainly explain why you're back already. They must have kicked you out."

Gabriel laughed and spun so that his back was to Morgon Mortimir. The young magister and his wife vanished into the crowd unaware. Sauce punched her captain in the shoulder hard enough to bruise. "Tell me true, Gabriel. It's been two months. We all thought you were dead. Even Master Smythe."

Gabriel sighed and rubbed at his shoulder. "I know. It's a long story, though, and I would rather only tell it once."

Sauce snorted. Well, it was certainly him, at least. The song drew to a close and they stepped out of the center of the courtyard. Sukey and Tom were doing the same nearby. Sauce grabbed Gabriel and steered him in their direction, ignoring his protests entirely and manhandling him through the crowd. Tom saw her first and waved a greeting. He laughed when she shoved Gabriel forward, but cut off with a choked noise once the torchlight revealed his face. He was silent for an eternal minute. Gabriel eyed him warily, and if most of Alison wasn't busy being mad at him herself, she would be watching Tom the same way. Tom reached out and gripped Gabriel's shoulder, as if checking to see if he was real.

And then the shouting started.

Alison had a hard time following Tom’s Hillman talk when it got heavy, which it did whenever he was upset. She could make out enough to know that near every other word was some variant of _fuck_, a sentiment with which she agreed wholeheartedly. She watched smugly as Gabriel tried to interrupt Tom, to no avail. A crowd was starting to gather- Bad Tom at full volume was not something easily ignored. Gabriel eyed the people pressing close, their faces hidden by shadows and dancing torchlight. Alison was close enough to catch Tom’s quiet words as he finally wound down.

“You were meant to be with the _casa,_” he said, and Alison wasn’t sure she’d ever heard the big man sound so wounded. Gabriel’s smug smile at last vanished.

“I’m sorry, Tom,” he said gently. “It had to be done.”

“Bullshit,” Tom pronounced, pulling Gabriel into a massive hug. The Captain was by no means a small man, but next to Tom, _everyone_ looked small. When he finally pushed away, he stood on his toes and dropped a kiss on Tom’s cheek.

“That’s from Sukey, by the way.”

Tom froze for just a moment. “You were kissing my _wife?_”

“Technically, I think she kissed me. Anyway, last time I saw you, you both kissed me.”

The argument only devolved from there. Alison laughed. She caught Sukey’s eye across the open space. Sukey winked and Alison laughed harder. She swept her gaze across the gathered crowd. A fair number were important persons gathered on their campaign, or else people important in Liviapolis. A lot of them were Company faces, though, and they ranged from disbelieving to tearful to _done with this shit._ Alison’s eye caught on Gavin, hovering nearby. She approached him.

“Shouldn’t you be out there greeting your idiot brother?”

He quirked a smile. “Maybe.”

Alison took him by the shoulder and shoved him into the center of the space. “Tom! Someone else’s turn to yell at him!”

Gabriel turned and embraced his younger brother, laughing. The laughing was soon followed by more shouting, though Gavin was nowhere near as ear-splitting or long-winded as Bad Tom. Soon enough, Michael forced his way forward with Kaitlin and their daughter a pace behind. Gabriel hugged them all at once and Kaitlin favored him with a very sisterly kiss. In fact, as the night wore on, Alison became convinced that Gabriel was on a mission to kiss _everyone._ More than half of the surviving core of the old Company was present and he circulated among them, laughing and accepting the various greetings, curses, and scoldings from his oldest friends.

Alison never saw him approach Blanche, but she heard the Empress’s shriek of joy. Alison hadn’t gotten the chance to know Blanche very well in the chaos of the race for the gates, but she liked the woman well enough. Blanche tried to tackle Gabriel into a hug, but she was hampered by her massive stomach. She cursed loudly and Gabriel laughed, and Alison smirked to see the faces of the old Morean nobility.

“What’s going on?” Morgon Mortimir appeared at her side. “I heard shouting.”

“There’s been shouting for the past hour,” Sauce snorted. “You only just noticed?”

“I was checking on the _aethereal_ paneling that’s keeping the snow out- they’ve been up for most of the day and I was worried that the sympathetic links wouldn’t-” Sauce cut across his mage chatter.

“Gabriel’s back.”

Morgon’s voice died. “He’s what?”

Sauce nodded towards Blanche’s raised dais. “He’s right over there.”

Morgon’s eyes latched onto Gabriel. “He’s…? How?”

Sauce shrugged. “Don’t ask me. He just fuckin’ showed up.”

“But- it shouldn’t be possible.” Morgon descended into half-formed muttered musings. He stepped forward, face set, intent on Gabriel. Sauce rolled her eyes and hauled him back.

“Let him say hello to his wife first, will you? The interrogations are for tomorrow anyway.”

“But-” Morgon protested again. “He achieved apotheosis. There’s no coming back from that. Not even for him.”

“And yet, there he stands, the contrary bastard.” Alison slung her arm around Morgon and corralled him away.

“Are you sure it’s him?”

“Of course it’s him,” Alison scoffed.

“What makes you so sure?”

“Who else would be this much of an asshole?”

\---

Gabriel kissed Blanche again, revelling in the chaos below. He swept his gaze across the crowd, finding new faces he hadn’t yet greeted with each pass. Blanche smiled fondly and shoved at him.

“Go on. I can’t very well keep you to myself all night, can I?”

“You’re the Empress. You can do just about anything and no one will say anything about it.”

Blanche eyed him. “Even I know your Company better than that. They would never forgive me.” Gabriel laughed and kissed her.

“I’ll find you afterwards,” he promised.

“You had better!” Blanche shouted after him as he ducked into the crowd of people again.

In the dancing torchlight, Gabriel flowed between the bodies around him. In the near-dark, most didn’t recognize him until he was well past, and even then they couldn’t be sure.

Desiderata stood in front of him, arms crossed. She looked older after the day holding the choir at Lissen Carak, but the Albin queen was still beautiful. Gabriel gave her his most courtly bow and she laughed, high and bright. “I truly didn’t believe it, but here you are!” She leaned close and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Blanche will be so happy.” Gabriel smiled and Desiderata vanished into a pack of dancers.

“Captain!” Cully stood beside him now, and Gabriel soon found himself surrounded by arms as the Company’s best and oldest archers enfolded him.

Toby and Anne found him next. Both of them were wearing knight’s belt’s now. Toby was trying not to cry while Anne alternated between glaring and grinning. Gabriel embraced them both.

There was another face any time he turned. It was nearly too much, but with Ash dead, he felt lighter than he had in years. The buzz had finally dimmed when Morgon found him. Morgon hugged him as tightly as he had before the battle, begging him not to cast again.

“_How?_” he demanded. Gabriel sighed.

“It’s a long story,” he repeated. “I’ll tell it tomorrow.”

“This isss a story I, too, would much like to hear, man,” a beautiful voice hissed. Gabriel turned and found the Lord and Lady of Faery in all their splendour. Tapio’s smile showed his fangs and Tamsin’s face betrayed only a hint of curiosity. The irks retreated before Gabriel could find a more eloquent way to say _for God’s sake I’m not talking about it tonight._

“Gabriel, what was it like?” Morgon took none of the subtler hints. “Your hand is gone again. Can you still cast? When Ash-”

The lights went out, every torch dead in a single breath. Tamsin’s laughter echoed over the widespread cursing.

In truth, Gabriel had no idea if he could still work ops or potentia. He had been too scared the answer would be no to find out. Outside of his talk with Amicia, he hadn’t even retreated to his palace since his return. Taking a deep breath and forcing a grin at Morgon in the heavy darkness, he entered his _palace. It wasn’t as bright as he thought it should be, but he was there to fix that anyway. He gathered whatever power he could from inside himself and shaped a working. The first one he had learned and the most familiar._

“Let’s find out,” he said in the real, and released the working.

“_Fiat lux._”

And all through the cloth-roofed courtyard, dimly, there was light.


End file.
